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Friday, February 24, 2017

Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The
rules are simple simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the
series main page here.

I think my favourite Thursday now is the last Thursday because it's the Television Edition. As I've mentioned before, because I now have subscribe to a streaming service, I watch a lot more TV and I have been yearning to talk about them. I have also been really looking forward to today's theme because I just love this genre.

Daredevil (2015 - )

I think it's the best out of the Netflix Marvel series for now, we'll have to see how Iron Fist is when it premieres in March. The fight choreography in this is just so good and it feels more gritty when we see both Daredevil and whoever he is fighting with gasp for breath and struggle to be the better fighter. My favourite overall is the first season; it had a better villain, a mortal villain. With the arrival of Elektra in the second season, we'd probably see more supernatural elements which I don't really like. Anyway... I have to say I love the costume choices in Daredevil; in season 1 Daredevil simply wore like a black shirt and like tied a black bandanna to cover his eyes. Season 2 he got a little upgrade, which still looks modest and suits Matt's character. I especially like Elektra's costume, which was like this simple black top with a red turtle neck that she uses to cover her face, which is so much more practical and looks so so much better than the corset outfit Jennifer Garner had to wear as Elektra in the movies. Let's just hope Elektra's costume remain practical in season 3. Jessica Jones (2015 - )We don't get a lot of female superheroes, so yay for Jessica Jones. Like Daredevil, this one is also pretty dark and gritty. So the gist is that she's a person with special abilities, who after suffering from a recent trauma decides to run a private detective business, lay low and not be a hero.I came to watch this knowing very little about Jessica Jones as I had never heard of the character before and I think I enjoyed the series a lot in part because I didn't know what she was up against. I think this series truly has the most terrifying villain ever because not only is he nuts...his power is the kind that you never want anyone to have.

The Flash (2014 - )

I could not watch Gotham, Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow past the first few episodes. Arrow is okay but just don't think too much because everything will seem stupid once you start to, ascharacters like die and get resurrected, so basically there are no stakes? Anyway....out of the DC comics superhero TV shows, I think The Flash is the best. A lot of it probably has to do with Grant Gustin just being great as Barry Allen. Even when the show gets bloated with its 20+ episode season and sometimes ridiculous plots, Barry still seems like a real person.

Heroes (2006 - 2010)So you may have heard of a series that had a great first season and just went a downward spiral afterwards...yeah it was Heroes. The show was not based on a comic book, which was really refreshing but yet looked like it was and had characters and story we didn't know about, so it was all very fascinating the first season. Unfortunately the show just wasn't able to capitalize on that the rest of the seasons so I'd say stick to just watching the first season. Even the new sequel series in 2015, Heroes Reborn was bad and pretty much had characters running in circles asking where's Claire! I'm like, Claire knows better than to return to the sinking ship.

Misfits (2009 -2013)
This is a gem. Love it. It's a UK show, so I'm guessing not a lot of people outside of UK would have seen it? I do think it's now available on a couple of streaming services, so if it's on yours, add it to your queue. The gist is; 5 juvenile delinquents (about late teens early 20-ish youths?) are stuck doing community service at their community center when they get hit by lightning during a freak storm and get some special abilities. The whole series is basically about them learning about their powers and dealing with other people who were also caught in the storm and now have powers as well. A lot of the powers in this are interesting in that they often relate to who the characters are as a person. For example, there is runner who develops the ability to sort of time travel and another I assume was probably a gamer and when hit by the storm is somewhat stuck in seeing the world like a video game, specifically something that looks like a Grand Theft Auto game. Iwan Rheon, Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones, is in this too and he plays a painfully shy guy who has the power of invisibility and his character has the best character arc in the series. There's 5 seasons in total but as this is a UK series they're short seasons. I would say the first 2 seasons are the best because the original cast is intact. The 3rd season is still great but sad because 3 more characters would exit the show by the end of it. Be warned that the show is not afraid to kill its main characters, so brace your hearts. That said the show is also often very very funny. In short go watch it!

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Friday, February 17, 2017

Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The
rules are simple simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the
series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Shakespeare Adaptation

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I think I've picked all of them before, but since I decided to do a theme within a theme I'm picking them again.

West Side Story (1961)

I could not watch this the first time I saw it. The dancing turned me off. Gave it another try a few years a later, and I like it much better. Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet was about feuding rich powerful families, West Side Story took it to the city and made it about rival New York City gangs. The urban landscape and race relations madean old story feel a lot more relevant. I appreciate the dancing now too, the choreography was really good.Romeo and Juliet (1968)I love this one. Shot in Italy, it feels the most authentic. The leads were also actual teenagers and as Romeo and Juliet, they were as young, playful, flirty and naive as they were written.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)One of my favorites. I would never have thought that Shakepeare's style of speech would work in contemporary setting, but here it soo does. I think Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes have always been good actors and they're really good in this as well.

Romeo & Juliet (2013) Sorry to end with a bummer, this is probably one of the worst R&J ever. They kept the original setting and even shot in Italy, it's probably trying to be better than the Zeffirelli version but just fails. Not sure how much was changed from the original playbut a lot of it feels lacking; like it's not fun and flirty (at least in the beginning it was supposed to be) and totally lack any passion. The delivery too by the actors too was just so meh.Everything was just not working here.

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you are participating be sure to add your blog post to the linky widget
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Friday, February 10, 2017

Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The
rules are simple simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the
series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Prodigy/Genius

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A very late post...sorry and a quick one too.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

My favorite Wes Anderson movie. It's about a dysfunctional family consisting of three grown up prodigies.Proof (2005)I've talked about this one too before. I really loved it when I saw this, a long time ago. Preferred it to the other movie about mentally ill mathematician, A Beautiful Mind. Anyway Proof follows the daughter of a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician, as she realises that she too may have inherited his illness.

Ex Machina (2015)One of the main characters is a young tech ceo / mad scientist who creates intelligent androids and conducts disturbing psychological experiments in his secret secluded home/lab.

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you are participating be sure to add your blog post to the linky widget
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Thursday, February 2, 2017

Hello there and welcome to Thursday Movie Picks a weekly series where you share movie picks each Thursday. The
rules are simple simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the
series main page here.

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This week's Thursday Movie Picks is Movies About Artists (Painters)

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We've had themes on writers and musicians, so I thought let's do one on painters. Did I realise there aren't a great many movies about them, maybe not. My choices were slim, in fact I think these were the only 3 I've seen.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)

A fictional tale about the unknown girl in Vermeer's famous painting. I've picked this one before so I'll keep this short.Love this one. It's slow moving but so good and such a beautiful looking film . The set design and the lighting makes everything look like they came off the paintings. Renoir (2012) Jean Renoir the son of the famous painter returns home during World War I to convalesce after being wounded. Assisting his father, Jean meetshis latest young muse who would become his own muse in his eventual filmmaking career. Like the Girl with a Pearl Earring this film was just gorgeous. I came into the film without reading the synopsis thinking it was about the painter; it's actually more about the family and their relationship. I knew nothing of the painter Renoir beyond just having seen his paintings; he was an old man the time the film is set, suffering from arthritis affecting his hands which required him an assistant to prepare his brushes and place them in his hands but continued to paint till the end which was just fascinating.

Summer in February (2013)A love triangle involving two painters and a land agent at an artist colony in Cornwall. The movie was unfortunately very dull, I just could not care for the story. Unlike the above two films that took total advantage of them being films about artists and using their work as a reference for the visual style of the movie, Summer in February doesn't quite do that; it doesn't have a visual identity. I think it's probably because it features more than one artists it couldn't exactly amalgamate all their artistic style and turn it into the film's visual style which takes out the fun of watching a film about artists.

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you are participating be sure to add your blog post to the linky widget
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